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JULY 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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22 hours ago, Loki said:
On 7/7/2020 at 8:25 AM, Zimbra said:

I liked Mike Awesome's hardcore title reign only because he won it by giving Rhyno a pretty gross powerbomb on a ladder backstage.

I was at MSG that night!

I was too.

Your dark match the next night before Smackdown was not great 

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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

Yes. Also, the newer generations not only have access to learning via the Internet that we didn't have but are using it positively... unlike their predecessors. 

Dumping children into a no-hope warzone is gonna make them smarter and warier in all fashions, anyway. You gotta grow up fast.

This might be the most accurate description of Social Media I've seen.

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Watching the '96 KOTR. Everyone only remembers Austin's speech but there was an awesome, underrated main event with Shawn and Davey. Great pacing - good mixture of technical work and high spots. Everything in the match has a purpose and means something. This feels kind of like what Bret/Shawn at WM should have been structure wise. One big goof where Davey goes to the top rope for no reason and basically trips and falls, and the finish with 2 refs is wonky, but I'd say it's the 3rd best WWF match of 1996 behind Bret/Austin and Shawn/Foley.

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13 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Presumably, Hogan could always use a full Nelson or bear hug. 24 inch pythons, brother.

I read in an interview somewhere that it never dawned on him to use a sleeper as a finisher. LARGEST ARMS IN THE WORLD PUTTING SOMEONE TO SLEEP...IT WAS RIGHT THERE DUDE.

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He said he wished he'd used a Sleeper after he realised what using the legdrop of dumb had done to his spine.

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18 hours ago, Yo-Yo's Roomie said:

My friend and I were talking about Raven earlier, and about how perfect his look and character were for the mid-90's. That got me thinking, what are some of the most zeitgeist-defining looks or gimmicks in wrestling history. I suppose you'd have to mention Hogan in the 80's. When two of the biggest stars in Hollywood were Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the WWF had their very own version with Hulk. Nowadays, even though the gimmick is at least 6 years old at this point, I don't think anyone has a more contemporary look than Sasha Banks.

Dusty in the 70's with the crazy pimp clothes, also Flair as a rich asshole in the 80's. Crow Sting was a good representation of 90's where people had a lot less trust of the government and institutions. Sasha is a good choice, but I think theirs a number of people who are good today. Aleister Black looks like someone you'd see at a Marduk or Watain show. Auska and Kairi Sane both seem relevant with how people are into anime and jpop culture. This is one area where I feel the WWE is doing well having relevant gimmicks/ characters KSRR.png

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

He said he wished he'd used a Sleeper after he realised what using the legdrop of dumb had done to his spine.

I sometimes wonder if anyone can make a career in wrestling and stay healthy.  I mean, I feel like Santino should have been the poster boy for longtime health in the WWE and he couldn’t stay healthy.  Santino worked a low-impact style, mostly worked short comedy matches on the main roster, was rarely in a position where he had to take a big bump or try to pop the crowd with a dangerous spot, and somehow got jabbing people with his hand over as a finisher.  If he couldn’t stay healthy, I’m skeptical anyone can.

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All it takes is one bad bump or pre-existing issue to screw up your spine that badly. I don't know what it was in his case. Maybe all the bumping before he got into the comedy.

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

He said he wished he'd used a Sleeper after he realised what using the legdrop of dumb had done to his spine.

He could have always used the Axe Bomber instead too... but then again, it sure wasn't no LARIAT Lariat, that's for sure

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19 hours ago, RolandTHTG said:

Austin will forever be linked with Jerry Springer, crash TV, South Park, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill, etc, despite having very little in common bar sharing a complaint letter from Phil Muschnik.

I think he may be linked to these things, but I think he was the perfect picture for the counter culture movement of the 90's. It went from the glitz and glitter of the 80's to the grunge, no nonsense straight forward approach. Rock music would be my best comparison.

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ECW in 95 felt grunge while mid 90's WWF felt stuck on hair metal with all the Neon New Generation stuff. Austin was WWF getting caught up with the times. Russo had a ton of bad ideas but I do feel he deserves some credit for getting Vince out of the 80's

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1 hour ago, zendragon said:

This is one area where I feel the WWE is doing well having relevant gimmicks/ characters 

How is that currently translating to the popularity of WWE though?

7 minutes ago, zendragon said:

ECW in 95 felt grunge while mid 90's WWF felt stuck on hair metal 

To be fair, they tried with stuff like Rad Radford and Man Mountain Rock (juxtapose with stuff like the New Rockers). However, it was just way too one dimensional because who in WWF creative was going to get that. Ross? Nah. Cornette? I'm 50/50 on that. Prichard? Probably, but I'm not sure how much weight he would put behind it. They would go one step forward and then do shit like Rockabilly and the Real Double JJ (although you can argue Achy Breaky Heart was such a crossover hit you had to do some shit related to country music). 

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22 hours ago, For Great Justice said:

I’ll submit HHH vs Orton in a straight up wrestling match at 25. Not sure anything gets that crowd back for them, but a bloody arena brawl was certainly the way to go considering the build.

Watched that WM at a pool hall with my cousin. Between the match and the giant frozen margaritas they were serving, he was asleep 5 minutes into that match. I had to nudge him when the match was over so we could leave.

 

As far as gimmicks of their times, what about the Hardys and Lita? 

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46 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Size of the crowds too. Did you watch that Waltman/Hart match that got posted here recently? It was embarrassing how few people there were and the venue they were in.

It's crazy to think that they taped multiple RAWs in high school gyms during 93/94.

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2 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

How is that currently translating to the popularity of WWE though?

 

I don't know but despite all the talk about WWE rating being in free fall, wrestling seems relevant as its been since the attitude era. I feel like I see more people talking about it on social media, wrestling being covered on ESPN and television, The Miz having a couple of TV shows. It FEELS cool and popular, and I seem to know more people into it, yet the numbers don't reflect that

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1 hour ago, zendragon said:

I don't know but despite all the talk about WWE rating being in free fall, wrestling seems relevant as its been since the attitude era. I feel like I see more people talking about it on social media, wrestling being covered on ESPN and television, The Miz having a couple of TV shows. It FEELS cool and popular, and I seem to know more people into it, yet the numbers don't reflect that

I think this pretty much is an indicator that television (both linear and OTT) is basically a content mill now (shit, look at the beating Quibi is taking right now). You would have a shorter amount of time naming who doesn't have a television show in some shape or form. As much as I'm not a fan of the "intersectional/being black is not a monolith" crowd, I can say confidently as an African-American that the black spectrum now on television is vast compared to the 90s when Living Single was a breakthough for black television. A show like Pose for example on FX wouldn't exist even twenty years or fifteen years ago let alone thirty years ago. No way in hell. It's not because being identifying as both black and LBGT is now super popular, but television is in a different space from the past. Representation is looked at differently.

So I would not say wrestling even feels more popular as much as wrestling isn't as demonized as it was several years ago. The problem still though is if you have your finger on the pulse of now, there is no way in the hell you continue to do record low numbers. I think a big issue is the stigma developed within wrestling fans where if wrestling does try to be hip and cool, the fans (or more importantly, lapsed or potentially new fans) revolt against that because of past failures. You might love your parents to death, but if your dad got up at a family function and starting dabbing (five years after it was cool) out of fucking nowhere, your skin would crawl in embarrassment. I think wrestling being so popular at one point in time makes it feel like a relic of a bygone era especially if you keep trotting out old wrestlers from that specific era. As Bert Sugar would say, horse racing, baseball, and boxing were the biggest pastimes in America in the early 20th century. If Bert were still alive, he would see that they ain't now more than a century later. Yeah, you will get a couple boxing mega bouts that do 1 million or more annually. The Triple Crown does well for NBC every year. The World Series captures the intrigue of people for a couple weeks every year. It still ain't the same as it was back then. 

I think part of the reason why wrestling was so big at one point is that it didn't necessarily have to have it's finger on the pulse. It was not an either/or thing. You could do both. Seamlessly if need be. The Undertaker is perhaps one of the greatest gimmicks ever. Maybe you can tie it in with some of the dark, over the top rock music in the 80s, but there was nothing that made it extremely time sensitive. You can do that gimmick in ANY era of modern pro wrestling. They haven't produced anything since then even close to that, which is why this motherfucker is still around. Therefore, it comes off as wrestling still looking for that magical formula that worked when wrestling was cool. So no, I cannot imagine or fathom it feeling remotely close to the Attitude era. I think that's more anecdotal evidence.

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@Elsalvajeloco Honestly, those things probably explain why pro wrestling is still so "up to date" more than anything. Ultimately, Wrestling is niche, but "niche" is the mainstream right now. 

With how inclusive and how welcoming popular culture is right now, there's no longer one distinct way to experience culture at this point and time- and in all likeliness, there never will be again. We're in a post-zeitgeist society: Any specific person now has the power to decide what culture is important to them, personally- and then they can curate their cultural experience to reflect what they already decided was important to them. While previous cultural shifts had a distinct form and feel to it, in this time period, pop culture is whatever you, personally, want it to be. 

With that in mind, you can't have ONE gimmick that specifically dictates how pro wrestling represents popular culture at large, because pop culture is "I care about this thing, and that fact makes this thing culturally important." You can't have your finger on the pulse of society anymore, because the pulse of society is YOUR pulse, and what YOU like matters, and anything you don't like is completely unimportant. 

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1 hour ago, SorceressKnight said:

@Elsalvajeloco Honestly, those things probably explain why pro wrestling is still so "up to date" more than anything. Ultimately, Wrestling is niche, but "niche" is the mainstream right now. 

With how inclusive and how welcoming popular culture is right now, there's no longer one distinct way to experience culture at this point and time- and in all likeliness, there never will be again. We're in a post-zeitgeist society: Any specific person now has the power to decide what culture is important to them, personally- and then they can curate their cultural experience to reflect what they already decided was important to them. While previous cultural shifts had a distinct form and feel to it, in this time period, pop culture is whatever you, personally, want it to be. 

With that in mind, you can't have ONE gimmick that specifically dictates how pro wrestling represents popular culture at large, because pop culture is "I care about this thing, and that fact makes this thing culturally important." You can't have your finger on the pulse of society anymore, because the pulse of society is YOUR pulse, and what YOU like matters, and anything you don't like is completely unimportant. 

I would say niche and being inclusive is part of the mainstream, but it's not THE mainstream if that makes any sense. I was going to use this as an addendum to my prior post, but I'll use it here: Kenya Barris is a pretty successful producer/showrunner right now. He has this new show called BlackAF. To be fair, I've never watched it (or any of his other shows since it's not my cup of tea). However, I've heard some of the hype/buildup that falls into my space of black/African-American politics and why this one in particular might be problematic. Basically, if you're Kenya Barris and your aim is to show how black rich people are underrepresented in society or how they struggle with their blackness, I don't know who you expect to catch in this net you're casting. You know why black wealthy people are underrepresented in television and film? Because essentially there are none. There is Oprah, Jay-Z, a few rappers, and a few pro athletes. There are about 40 million black people in the United States. Why would you think this is the time for "yeah, we gotta show how this extremely tiny subset of people live and personally interact." This is you doing too much. When you have something that niche you're trying to pull off, it comes off as a vapid and soulless (which looking at the critiques of this show, it seems like a recurring theme in the criticism). I remember when Channing Dungey, then ABC Entertainment president and now current Netflix VP for Original Content, was asked something to the effect of why there isn't a black show like Roseanne (which had just returned) instead of bringing back Roseanne. The TL:DR version of her answer was basically as much she would like a show like that, her job is wish fulfillment television. Hence, why black people got Scandal and blackish under her tenure at ABC. Keep in mind, Channing Dungey is black. Not only is she black, but she's one of the very, very few black people with any sort power in Hollywood. Think about that shit. You (as one of the few black people in your role in the entire world) bring back a show that depicts lower to middle lower class white life in a realistic manner (which made it super successful in the first place), but depicting black people outside of this imaginary existence/escape hatch is far from your grasp. Okay, got it. This is why I kinda always push back on certain forms of escapism. Why? Looking at what has gone on just in the past six or seven weeks alone in this country, you come off extremely tone deaf ESPECIALLY in hindsight.

So...vapid, soulless, and tone deaf. Any of those adjectives or labels, you can put on pro wrestling. It's the reason why so many people like myself dropped out. For myself personally, it wasn't one big reason. It just took three insanely bad Raw episodes in a row like six or seven years ago and I was gone. Never really been back, and probably won't ever be back full time. That's what it took for me. If the object of the game is to get as many eyeballs on your show as possible, you cannot drop out of the mainstream in that way. At one point, it was called jumping the shark in television. Now there is something worse than that in televised entertainment: people not remotely giving shit and dropping like flies. This is what happened with pro wrestling.

Moreover, unfortunately for wrestling, the whole term niche is designed to be not welcoming and also not inclusive. You cannot start a group and then invite everyone in. Then that's just called everybody, not a group. Part of being inclusive is also being at the same time...exclusive. As an heterosexual, black male, I cannot then say I am a gay or queer identifying white male...cause I'm not. If I was applying for a college scholarship to get black males in STEM or whatever years ago, you can fucking bet I want that shit to be exclusive as humanly possible to better my odds. Matter of fact, make that shit even more exclusive because I don't want someone fresh from Nigeria or Ghana or Senegal with two working professional parents getting a leg up on a scholarship that was designed for me with parents and grandparents who had to bare the bloody cost of living in this country for several generations. It's the reason I need the scholarship in the first place. By understanding that concept or principle, you know you start off filtering people when you're niche. You don't get elevated to a place where you just start adding fans in droves because you're looking for a certain category of people. Everybody else becomes expendable. That's not something I can see pro wrestling being able to afford. Baseball, even with abhorrent racists and other terrible people passing through, can afford it because it was engineered into the American way of life. You would never call baseball niche even when there is a work stoppage back in like 94 and people were taking huge dumps on the sport. Never. When people started hitting balls to the moon juiced out of their goddamn minds, people came back for a little while. Why? Because there is an attraction ingrained in people to watch something that's current, relevant, and (what they feel) is their birthright as American citizens to see. Being a part of the mainstream is a lot of things, but everything still revolves largely around timing and perception. You cannot escape that.

Just like I brought up with Barris, his first attempt at this concept was a smash hit (blackish). A lot of that could be contributed to it coming in the Obama era when the door was wide open for any and everything black, regardless of quality. His second attempt, blackAF, was a huge swing and a miss. Wrong time and wrong place, baby. It probably (dare I say likely) only got renewed cause Netflix gave Barris some money, and they've got to make stealing Barris, Dungey, and Shonda Rimes from ABC worth it. Hence, my content mill assessment earlier. However, they could never replicate their success at ABC with Netflix because it was built on a dishonest (at least intellectually) foundation in the first place. You're just throwing shit at the wall, hoping it works. Again, you can use this same logic to describe the current state of pro wrestling. You cannot flail this wildly and not appear to be desperately clinging to relevance. It's too evident.

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Enzo Amore is offering Wrestling lessons on OnlyFans. I'm sure the "How to get thrown over the top rope" section will be a real highlight.

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11 minutes ago, AxB said:

Enzo Amore is offering Wrestling lessons on OnlyFans. I'm sure the "How to get thrown over the top rope" section will be a real highlight.

“The key, bro, is to use your chin as the pivot point for maximum torque on your neck, bro.”

His main skill is getting hit in the face really hard, I’d sign up to do that.

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